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Monday, April 07, 2008

Chocolate Festival!

Our awesome Service VP Cristina writes:

Again, the Chocolate Festival, an event run by the CSC where chocolate vendors come to showcase their wares and various chocolate-themed activity booths are set up, was in the Glass Pavilion. And again, APO was there, both volunteering and eating copious amounts of chocolate and cookies.

APO ran the pudding-eating contest. It started like this:

And ended like this!

APO wins!!!

Kate is planning on a career in architecture...

Also, I know I'm preaching to the crowd, but if you make Vivian happy, she will make you look like this:

SO FUNDRAISE FOR RELAY!

Have a nice day! ^_^

Being in a good mood is awesome. So is eating a rice krispies treat the size of your face.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Keswick

Old man Will V writes:

As with almost every weekend, we will be going to Keswick Multi Care center this Saturday!!

Keswick is a great place to volunteer because you get to help out people who are normally ignored and forgotten. It is very rewarding, and some of the residents are remarkably interesting.

As usual, we will be meeting up at The Carlyle at 1:30PM on Saturday and we will finish at 4:00 PM.

Contact Will V. (EMAIL: will.verduzco(at)gmail(dot)com or IM: and he responds) if you would like to sign up for this wonderful service opportunity.

Our wonderful Keswick team...

(Thanks Nazia for the pic)
Book Thing

A word from our president, Dave:

Book Thing is perhaps the best project known to man. Where else can you bury yourself (literally, if you like) in the world's greatest literature, take as many free books home with you as you want, get free coffee, pizza, and Chinese food, get service hours, work with the APO brothers and peldges you know and love, meet new brothers and pledges you'll soon know and love, and do all of it at the same time? And to make it even better, it's within walking distance of campus and features convenient and accommodating hours of operation for volunteers. You serve your community not by cleaning some building nor by accomplishing some menial task but by making it possible for the community members to better their minds through literature and the compiled knowledge of humanity.

For the uninitiated, The Book Thing of Baltimore Inc. is an organization that gives away free books to anyone who wants them. As many as you want, you may have; bring your station wagon and fill it to the brim if it makes you happy; it's all free. We as volunteers work there by processing the donations we receive, sorting the books by category and stamping them so that they can't be resold, by shelving books in the warehouse and helping community members to find what they're looking for. The turnover rate is usually about 10,000 books each week, but sometimes it's many, many more.

I've volunteered at Book Thing for years now, and it never disappoints. I've taken hundreds of books, and there's always something new to read and to ponder. If you're looking for an experience that will enlighten and entertain, Book Thing may well be for you.

Book thing takes place every Saturday, 9-12, 12-3, 3-6, and every Sunday 9-12 and 12-3

Contact Dave (EMAIL: dtomich(at)gmail(dot)com ) if you would like to sign up for this wonderful service opportunity.

(Image courtesy of Dave T)
PB & J sandwich making with PHSF

One of our Service VPs, Cristina, writes:

Woo! first real entry! It's a test run, to be honest. We're not sure exactly what's going to come of it, but it you attend a service event and want to write about it, message this account, or leave a comment, ask about it at brother meeting, and we'll be really happy you did. Photos are welcome too!

On to the service:
Today, APO volunteers made a bazillion peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with Public Health Student Forum (PHSF) to donate to Our Daily Bread, a soup kitchen that APO usually volunteers at (but not this semester, soup kitchens are popular and have to be booked far in advance) . PHSF is a rather large organization having its awareness week this week, making the campus aware of...public health. Quite a few APO brothers are also in PHSF, which isn't surprising, since it's one of the hugest majors on campus. Actually, with a whopping 246 Public Health majors, it is the largest major on campus.

Anyways, ODB accepts donations of large amounts of food (and small amounts of food) to serve lunch "to the hungry of Baltimore City", and PB&J is the alternative to whatever hot meal they are serving that day. So your humble narrator is assuming that it's the vegetarian option, having sadly never been to ODB. Now I really want to ODB. This will have to wait.

The sandwich making went by surprisingly fast, there was an assembly line of people around the Charles Kitchens stovetop, some people putting jelly on bread, some people putting peanut butter on bread, people putting the halves together and into zip-lock baggies.

I came too late to be of much help, but put sandwiches in baggies and helped get the peanut butter off everything. And took a jar with me. And some sandwiches. And 4 slices of pizza. Then went to do homework.